ON TEMPERAMENT. 



LECTURE IT. 



TO-DAY I have, at the request of the authorities, undertaken 

 to give a brief analysis of a more difficult and more theoretical 

 but certainly a not less important subject. You must excuse 

 me if it is a little dry. Yesterday we had abundance of 

 experimental assistance ; to-day much of our time must be 

 occupied in even giving an outline of the subject, with figures 

 and diagrams. 



The subject is musical instruments and temperament, or 

 rather, temperament as applied to musical instruments ; and 

 here at the very beginning I must notice that there has been 

 much difference of opinion on the question. I find state- 

 ments as opposite as these. Col. Perronet Thompson, of whom 

 I shall have to speak further on, in his work on Just Into- 

 nation says, " The temptation under the old systematic teach- 

 ing to play out of tune, was that performers might play with 

 perfect freedom in all keys, by playing in none ; hence the 

 rivalry in the magnitude of organs, and sleight of hand and 

 foot to conceal ; but a reaction is setting in, and the world is 

 finding out that music is not in noise, but in the concord of 

 sweet sounds." On the other hand Dr. Stainer, a most 

 competent musician and theorist, who has published an excel- 

 lent work on harmony, writes in this way, " When musical 

 mathematicians shall have agreed amongst themselves on the 

 exact number of the divisions necessary in the octave ; when 

 mechanicians shall have constructed instruments on which 

 the new scale can be played ; when mathematical musicians 

 shall have framed a new notation which shall point out to the 

 performer the ratio of the note that he is to sound to the 

 generator ; when genius shall have used all this new material 

 to the glory of art, then it will be time enough to found a 

 new theory of harmony on a mathematical basis." Now I 

 have once before demurred very strongly to this mode of 



